News of the deaths of the accountants had been relayed to the royals hours after the order was given. Over the next few days, the death reports of the traitors' families continued to be presented to Viktor. All were made to look like freak accidents and impossible to trace back to the royal family.

Viktor read an ancient, leather-bound volume by a roaring fire in the castle's spacious library with a crystal glass of armagnac in hand. An outsider would have never assumed that Viktor ordered the slaughter of two families, it did not weigh on his conscience the way it might have another man. He was protecting the interests of his family, perhaps those nosy accountants should have done the same.

This was the first moment of respite Viktor had found in a month. He might have shouldered more of his duties on others if he didn't have something to prove. Viktor was well aware that the king was not pleased that Eric was dead and that left Viktor, a sterile man of a different line, crown prince. Viktor didn't have to ascertain that the king would much rather have his bastard son, Sean Renard, ascend the throne, his intuition practically screamed at him. Viktor's place in the family was dubious as a nephew of the king now set to inherit while the king's bastard son was still alive, he had half a mind to hire someone to test his food and drink for poison.

He closed his book, losing his interest in the history of wesen wars. He marked his place with the silk embroidered bookmark stitched into the binding. There was another book he wanted to read. A book he held dear since his childhood.

He placed the book back where he had found it and strode past several shelves and down the aisles they formed until he found what he wanted. He grabbed the heavy tome with two hands and carried it back to his chair by the fire. It was a tome of Greek myths and legends, the text in Greek. The book was nearly a century old, but still in good condition. Viktor had many warm memories with his mother reading Greek myths and legends to him as a child. It had been decades since he revisited this nostalgic tome, he once hoped his children would read the same stories he did, but that would never happen.

Viktor opened it to a random page, not expecting the page he revealed to seem so... relevant.

The Legend of Hades and Persephone.

It wasn't his favorite legend as a child, his boyhood consisted of reading and rereading the epic feats of Heracles or Perseus, but he was no longer a boy, he was a man nearly in his fifties who ordered murders, executions, and sessions of torture as if he were a zealous acolyte of Hades.

Viktor ran his long, slender fingers over an illustration of Persephone. Goddess of spring and queen of the underworld. It was ironic that Hades, god of the underworld, would make the goddess of spring, a goddess of new life, his queen. Ironic, but at the same time made perfect sense. What god of death wouldn't want to conquer and ravish a nubile goddess? So full of life and made even more beautiful with lips reddened and sweetened with the juice of a pomegranate seed.

Viktor closed the tome, rose to his feet so he could pour himself another drink from the small display table that showcased the dark liquor in a priceless crystal bottle. As he refilled his crystal glass, Sebastian entered the library.

"Your highness, Danilov is here." Sebastian's voice was strained with exhaustion, he was getting less sleep than Viktor was these days.

"Send him in." Viktor ordered. Sebastian nodded, he held the door open and showed Danilov, who had a file in hand, into the library.

"Your highness, I have the report about Klara Abspoel you requested." A rougher, spent quality in Danilov's voice made it obvious that he had gotten even less sleep than Sebastian or Viktor.

"Bring it here." Viktor demanded, his interest piqued. He took, almost snatched the file from Danilov's hand. "You're dismissed."

"Your highness." Danilov bowing his head in deference before promptly exiting the library.

Viktor sat back down by the fire and began to read about everything there was to know about Klara Abspoel.

Klara Marie Abspoel was a twenty-five year old American woman born to a working class family in a small midwestern town. Her father, the son of Dutch immigrants, worked at a steel mill and her mother was a Walmart cashier. She had a sister who was a year older named Lillian, who shared Klara's eyes and voluptuous figure. Klara had two nieces and three nephews, ranging from the ages of eight months to nine years.

There was a recent photo of the whole family and a man who Viktor presumed to be her sister's husband. They stood outside a small, white church with a blossoming cherry tree flanking the left and a flagpole on the right, the sky cloudy above them. The family was smiling brightly in their Sunday best, Klara held one of her nephews in the photo, a little towheaded toddler with a cheesy grin plastered on his face.

Viktor couldn't help but smile at the photo. Viktor never thought much of the quaint aesthetics of American small towns, he had only been to a few major cities on business.

Klara's favored, provincial lavender perfume now made sense considering her background. She was provincial in every way except for her career. Klara was soft, supple, almost blurred, nothing about her resembled the slender, sharp, elongated features of the aristocratic beauties Viktor courted in his youth before finding out he was sterile.

Viktor read her measurements, wondering what trouble had to be taken on to find out that information. She stood at 162 cm and measured 96-66-101 cm around the bust, waist, and hips, numbers that didn't come naturally to most women.

Klara did ballet as a girl and switched to gymnastics in high school. She went to college in Seattle for a year before she abruptly stopped and returned home when the 2008 recession hit. The recession hit her family hard. There was a point where they all shared one roof in their small family home. Klara's best friend in high school, Jane, overdosed on heroin, many people in her small town did during that period of time. There was a photo of Klara and Jane, the two of them had side-swept bangs that covered one eye and heavy eyeliner on their visible eye, wearing low rise skinny jeans, t-shirts with cartoon characters, and had entirely too many neon and black bracelets made out of rubber and plastic-beads on their wrists. Klara looked fifteen to sixteen years old in the photo, loosely holding a lit cigarette between two black-polished fingers and held a peace sign up to the camera.

Klara returned to her studies in 2011, receiving a scholarship for a study abroad program in Austria. She took the opportunity and graduated in 2013 with top marks. She was employed to work for the royal family right out of college, sending money home to her family each month. The photo of her family by the church showed them in happier times, starting to recover from the recession.

Viktor recalled his own, much different experience during the recession. The royals knew a recession was coming, they situated their finances so that they weren't just shielded, but profited off of the chaos. It was also an excellent opportunity to install politicians in several countries who spewed populist messages while being shills for the crown.

Viktor read over the rest of the report. Her favorite flower was lavender (unsurprising to him), her favorite color was powder blue, she used to judge her sister for getting pregnant at seventeen, she went out for coffee and a pastry once a week with college friends but drank tea and ate fruit to soothe her sweet tooth for the rest of the week.

She had a long term college boyfriend, an attractive man her age with shoulder length hair who never wore anything he couldn't hike in. He left her almost nine months ago when he found out she got a job working for the royals, probably accused her of being a sellout and a shill considering his degree in environmental science and Die Grünen membership and activism. She hadn't dated or slept with anyone since, still reeling from the breakup. She kept a photo of her old boyfriend on her nightstand and still cried over him.

Her leftover feelings for her boyfriend did not intimidate or deter Viktor, if anything, it would make his seduction that much easier. Nine months without sex and emotional vulnerability from a callous rejection would make her very receptive to Viktor's charms. Viktor was the opposite of her ex boyfriend, older, wealthy, aristocratic, sophisticated, sensual, immoral, and not even remotely an idealist.

Something told Viktor that if Klara could find herself in the employ of the royals and expose a plot that would have threatened their power, even after experiencing harsh economic circumstances from a recession and years with a tree-hugging boyfriend who probably spent his time yammering her ear off about how they needed to 'stick it to the man,' she might not have been a moralist or an idealist either.

"Maybe, Persephone knew exactly what she was doing when that pomegranate seed passed her lips."